NBC News interview during the Lisa tour

Around this recording

The recordings either side of it, in order.

All 202 recordings of Steve Jobs →

1. 1981

   ABC News feature: starting a company in Silicon Valley

   A short ABC News segment in which the 26-year-old Apple chairman, shown riding his BMW motorcycle, explains Silicon Valley’s tolerance for start-up failure and why it is a good place to start a company. ABC News re-posted the clip on what would have been Jobs’s 60th birthday.

2. 1981

   ABC Nightline debate with Ted Koppel and David Burnham

   After a Cape Canaveral computer failure, Koppel moderates a debate between Jobs and privacy writer David Burnham. Jobs calls the computer ‘the bicycle of the 21st century’ and predicts one in ten US households will own one within five or six years.

3. 1981

   CBS News feature on the personal computer

   A short CBS news piece on the arrival of the personal computer in which correspondent Barry Petersen interviews Apple chairman Jobs. Jobs argues that people will adopt computers the way they adopted calculators and ATMs, gradually and on human terms rather than in a ‘1984’-style future.

4. 1981

   Nervous before a live TV appearance (‘ready to throw up’)

   A bearded young Jobs in a brown suit fidgets while being prepared for a live satellite TV interview, marvels ‘Look at that! I’m on television!’ and tells the crew he needs to know where the restroom is because he is ‘deathly ill, actually, and ready to throw up at any moment’.

5. 1982

   Applefest Boston: Jobs and Wozniak on software copy protection

   At the BCS-hosted Applefest in May 1982, an audience question prompts Wozniak to tackle copy protection technically while Jobs sketches a future of low prices and convenient electronic software distribution. One of the few surviving recordings of the two founders on stage together in the Apple II era.

6. 1982

   Academy of Achievement acceptance speech

   A ‘mischievous’ 27-year-old Jobs, attending at the suggestion of Bill Hewlett, urges the student delegates to seek unconventional experiences, think for themselves and give back to the innovation that enriched them. The seven-minute audio was released by the Academy after his death.

7. 1983

   NBC News interview during the Lisa tour

   A short NBC News clip shot during the January 1983 Lisa promotional tour in which the 27-year-old Jobs describes the ‘personal office system’ market and how the mouse lets users point at things instead of learning complex keyboard commands.

8. 1983

   Lisa presentation at the Aspen design conference (surviving excerpt)

   In a leather bomber jacket, Jobs compares the human brain with computers, explains the Lisa’s graphical interface and argues its ease of use multiplies productivity, before closing with a multimedia slide show.

9. 1983

   Aspen design conference keynote: ‘The Future Isn’t What It Used To Be’

   Wearing a bow tie (‘they paid me sixty dollars, so I wore a tie’), Jobs tells the assembled designers ‘we really, really need your help’, predicts PCs will outsell cars by 1986, and foresees portable computers with radio links, electronic mail, software sold like records and voice recognition a decade away.

10. 1983

    Aspen design conference: the ‘lost’ informal Q&A session

    Sitting backwards on a metal folding chair in casual clothes, Jobs takes questions from conference-goers for about 45 minutes on networking, privacy, graphic design, hiring and the future of the industry.

11. 1983

    Apple internal video: ‘The Macintosh Story’

    An in-house Apple film from the earliest days of the Macintosh in which Jobs and development-team members discuss the machine’s design, demonstrate it and tour the automated Fremont assembly line being built for it.

12. 1983

    ‘Lisa: Soul of a New Machine’ promotional film

    Apple’s 1983 promotional film for the Lisa office system explains the 68000-based hardware, the mouse-driven common user interface and the integrated software suite, with on-camera comments from Jobs and the Lisa team about the development effort and the competition from IBM and Xerox.

13. 1983

    Apple sales conference, Honolulu: ‘It is 1958. IBM passes up the chance...’

    Three months before launch, Jobs rallies Apple’s sales force with a litany of IBM’s missed chances (xerography in 1958, minicomputers in the late 1960s, the Apple II in 1977) building to ‘It is now 1984... Will Big Blue dominate the entire computer industry?’, then screens the Ridley Scott ‘1984’ ad to a roaring room.